Tiny Reviews: World Kora Trio, Sam Newsome, & Tim Kuhl

Tiny Reviews, featuring:  World Kora Trio Korazon, Sam Newsome The Art of the Soprano, and Tim Kuhl St. Helena.

*****

World Kora Trio – Korazon

Bringing together elements of Jazz, Folk, and African musics, the World Kora Trio situate themselves, more often than not, a fair distance away from the Jazz border of those three genres.  However, one, this is a minor point in the overall picture of a very beautiful album, and, two, it really brings a shine to those tunes when the trio does swing.  Music that feels free… light, buoyant, cheerful, celebratory.  Too pretty.  One of those go-to albums when the day is trying to send me spiraling into depression and I’m looking for an inoculation.  Fans of the Ablaye Cissoko/Volker Goetze collaborations should be taking a hard look at this album.

Your album personnel: Eric Longsworth (electric cello), Cherif Soumano (kora), and Jean-Luc di Fraya (percussion, vocals).

Released on the Passé Minuit label.

Jazz from the Corbeil Essonne, France scene.

Available at eMusic. Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Sam Newsome – The Art Of the Soprano Vol. 1

A solo soprano sax recording, much in the vein of Steve Lacy’s approach to soloing. A former member of Terence Blanchard’s Quintet, Sam Newsome switched from tenor to soprano, then delved into the musics of various geographies, before, now, settling into the role of solo performer. Special treat is the four parts of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme spread out over the recording. Cerebral music that explores sound and possibilities therein. Good stuff.

Your album personnel: Sam Newsome (soprano sax).

The album is Self-Produced.

Jazz from the Brookville, NY scene.

Download a free album track at the artist’s site (under Free MP3 Download).

Available at eMusic.

Tim Kuhl – St. Helena

Not even sure this should be filed under Jazz, though the ensemble members definitely have ties to the jazz community.  Drummer Tim Kuhl‘s chamber-electro-classical-jazz-pop-drone recording experiments with sound with the intention of creating a cinematic experience.  A variety of instruments create a variety of sounds for something pretty different from everything else.  This will appeal to fans of Chris Schlarb, Mercury Rev and Peter Broderick as much as jazz-drone fans.  Too interesting not to mention, and nearly six months after I first heard it, I’m still coming back to it.  I originally became familiar with drummer Kuhl and trombonist Parker from the Little Worlds ensemble, who put out the 2011 release Book One, a jazz/post-rock hybrid that sought to reinterpret Bartok’s Mikrokosmos collection.  So, yeah, interesting musicians involved in interesting projects will always get some print from me, genre be damned.

Your album personnel:  Rick Parker (trombone, effects), Jared Samuel (electric & synth bass, celeste), Tim Kuhl (drums, cymbals, gong, assorted percussion, glockenspiel), Grey Mcmurray (electric & acoustic guitar, effects, voice), Joshua Valleau (wurlitzer, synth), and guests:  Ryan Ferreira (electric guitar), Sofia Impellizzeri (voice, countess), and Philip Sterk (pedal steel guitar).

Released on the Eleven2Eleven Records label.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

You can stream the album on the artist’s bandcamp page.

Download a free album track at AllAboutJazz, courtesy of the artist and label.

Available at eMusic.

*****

The World Kora Trio review is original to Bird is the Worm, but portions of the other reviews were originally used in my Jazz Picks weekly article for eMusic, so here’s some language protecting their rights to that reprinted material as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks,“ and “New Arrivals Jazz Picks“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2012  eMusic.com, Inc.

As always, my sincere thanks to eMusic for the gig.  Cheers.